


If Shakespeare Be the Food of Love

by ohmyohpioneer



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-04
Updated: 2014-05-04
Packaged: 2018-01-21 22:24:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1566203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohmyohpioneer/pseuds/ohmyohpioneer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma and Killian meet during their college's production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	If Shakespeare Be the Food of Love

It begins with a tempestuous roll of thunder and a shipwreck.

Emma’s last show of her college career - the spring production of  _Twelfth Night_  - has been cast, and she assesses the curious spread of peers under her charge as stage manager.

“Can we cut the storm?” she hollers to the sound board, and with an abrupt clash, all is silent. 

Going down the row, she makes a note of each member under the watchful gaze of Professor Gold, the director.

“Okay, folks, grab a chair!” her voice hits the low ceiling of the college’s small auditorium. “First read through!”

She looks down at her list again, and there’s one name unchecked. “Killian Jones? Is Killian Jones here?” 

Her questions go unanswered, and she sighs deeply. So  _that’s_ how it’s going to be.

\---- 

“You were supposed to be off book by now.”

She finds him in a classroom just down the hall from the auditorium, leaning back in a chair, feet propped on a table.

He jerks his shoulders up, doesn’t bring his eyes to hers from where they are lazily tracing the words on a dog-eared paperback. “Sorry, love.”

It is all she can do to count backwards from ten before speaking. “No. Not  _sorry, love_ ,” her lips are pursed and she just  _knows_  that the tension behind her eyes is going to blossom into a full-on migraine. “Pick up your goddamn script, Holden Caulfield, and get it down.”

The grin he aims at her is all languid and smarmy. “Apologies, Swan,” he says. “I will memorize every word.”

“Yes. You will.” She moves forward with purpose and kicks the back legs of his chair, causing him to crash abruptly as all four legs make contact with the ground. “Because I am going to help you.”

The arch in his brow reaches new heights, but she ignores his incredulity and takes a seat just far enough that it isn’t an awkward expanse between them. Idly, she pages through the playbook while he retrieves his own from where it has been stuffed and manhandled into his back pocket.

He shoots her an expectant glare, “So, then, where are we beginning,  _Ms. Swan_?”

Clearing her throat, she ignores his jab and looks intently at the script. “Top of Act III,” she meets his gaze in a challenge because she  _should_  be making sure that David doesn’t touch the prop table  _not_ personally directing Killian Jones, “Can you handle that?”

“Oh,” he looks at her like she’s a sea squall herself – something like delight fleeting across his mouth, brow. “I think it’s you, who can’t handle it.”

\---

He’s standing out at the backdoor to the theater taking long drags from a hand-rolled cigarette (pretentious), and she can hear the tech crew fooling with the soundboard – booms of thunder, creeks of wood, rustles of palm trees, tremendous crashes of waves – as she gently props the door with a nearby stone.

“Those things will kill you,” she nods to the cigarette in his fingers.

A long inhale and a puff of smoke and he holds the butt out between his middle finger and thumb, examining it with reproach, “Aw, will you miss me, Swan?”

Emma rolls her eyes. “Just doing my civic duty,” she watches as he takes another pull. “Besides, you’re in health code violation, smoking this close to the building.”

Now he gives her a  _fuck all_ gesture.

“Why are you even doing this?” she finally asks, not without a modicum of frustration and tempered anger.

“Smoking?” He frowns. “Bad habit. I don’t actually smoke all that –“

“No,” she clenches her jaw, counts backwards from three. “Acting? In this play? Honestly, it doesn’t seem like you really care that much.”

He tosses the remainder of the cigarette to the ground and grinds it under leather boot. “Truthfully?”

He meets her gaze and there is something stunningly clear in his eyes that has nothing to do with the icy blue.

When he leans in she resists the urge to pull back. “Automatic A for the performing arts requirement,” he whispers, laughs loudly, and pushes away from the wall. “Now, Swan, I  _do_  believe you were coming to get me for second act.”

\---

She’s thrown herself headlong into this whole college experience thing and it still hurts when she lets her mind wander back to the semester (and years) before. (When she thinks about the thrill that climbed her spine when he would grin, lopsided at her from across the dining hall.)

“Emma!”

It is Robin. And he is  _drunk._

“Hey there, Loxley,” she accepts his sloppy hug – all arms and heavy leaning. “Having a good time, I see.”

When he pulls back, his grin is wide and dimpled. “It’s Saturday, Emma! Why wouldn’t I be having a good time?”

If the simple things make him happy, she can hardly fault him on that.

He seems to forget he is talking to her for a moment, and looks around wildly.

She raises her eyebrows, but smiles. “Looking for someone?”

“You don’t have a drink!” he shouts by way of answer.

“No!” she shouts back and splays her empty hands for him.

“That,” he takes one of her cool hands in his sweaty, alcohol sticky palm, “Is simply unacceptable. Right this way, m’lady.”

An hour later, she is about two solo cups and a game of Kings into the party when she sees  _him_  across the way. He’s talking and laughing with a gaggle of first year girls, and she thinks that maybe she can feel all of that cheap vodka repeating on her.

The house is dark and reeking of malt and yeast and it’s all she can do to ignore the thumping base of Two Chainz as she feels her way up the winding stairs to the bathroom.

The door clicks behind her, and she turns on the tap, running cold water over her hands. She wads a handful of toilet paper in her hand and wets it – pressing it to the back of her neck.

It still hurts – knowing she loved someone more than he would ever love her. Knowing she has brushed knees with him under the counter of their favorite bar, knowing how it feels to sneak into his room late at night, long after his housemates have fallen asleep, knowing what it is like when he  _sighs_ in his sleep.

She presses her forehead against the mirror. It doesn’t make  _sense_  because she doesn’t even  _like_ him anymore. But Neal (goddamn  _Neal_ ) is still a wound and his casual laugh with those girls (so open, so  _unburdened_ ) is a soft press against that tender flesh.

The handle on the door rattles to life and she jumps back, “Someone’s in here!”

But the door presses open in complete disregard of her warning, and there is Killian Jones looking like a goddamn idiot supermodel.

“Swan!” he shouts, crowding the small space that exists between the wall and the sink.

“I was in here, Killian.”

“I can see that,” he nods gleefully, “Still are, by all accounts.”

“Please leave.”

He looks at her for a moment – eyes jumping from her hand (clenched around the damp clump of toilet paper) to her mouth, turned down in displeasure.

“What’s wrong, Swan?” he moves closer, making an attempt to grab at the wet paper, but holding his hands up in (drunken) surrender when she withdraws.

“Nothing,” she crosses her arms.

“It’s not nothing, Swan,” he sighs deeply, caging his arms around her, her back gently hitting the counter.

“Well,  _now_  it’s sexual harassment,” she nods to his close proximity, and it seems to take his alcohol-addled brain a moment to process his position, before he pulls away unsteadily.

“Quite right,” he bows. “My apologies.”

“Great. Now can you leave me alone?”

He wavers, and he definitely smells like rum (looks like sin), but for all the cloudiness in his eyes, there’s a soft watchfulness there that forces her gaze to the torn shower curtain barely hanging in place to her left.

“My soul the faithfullest offerings hath breathed out, that e'er devotion tendered. What shall I do?” he breathes, all exhaled, airy syllables.

She rolls her eyes, but feels immensely lighter and more herself. “Okay, Shakespeare,” she absently tosses the disintegrated paper into the nearby trashcan and makes a path to the door. “That’s my cue to head out.”

“Parting,” he shouts, “Is such sweet sorrow!”

“Wrong play, Juliet,” she returns, beginning to weave her way through masses of people.

And if her mouth twitches, well, it doesn’t mean anything.

\----

“Please button your shirt.”

Cast and crew are hurriedly bustling across the thrust stage, a flurry of muttered lines, muttered curses. There’s a buzzing energy about this first dress rehearsal, an adrenaline she’ll miss following graduation.

“Too much temptation for you, love?” He waggles his brows suggestively, tilting his head down, staring up (seductively, she guesses) through thick lashes.

“No,” her voice is the deadest of pans. “You’re a duke. Not a gigolo.”

“Ah, but perhaps the Lady Olivia likes a man with a bit of hair on his chest.”

Emma cannot decide whether her anger management skills are being refined or frayed beyond repair, but she manages to recover. “Maybe  _she_  does, but you’re upsetting Ruby, who took the time to design all of these costumes.”

Killian glances over her shoulder. “Yes. I can see that.”

And sure enough, there is Ruby, standing in the wings, watching the exchange, taking in his exposed torso with a positively lupine hunger. Traitor.

“Fine,” she angrily adjusts her headset and moves past him to make sure that Regina is getting help with her corset. “Do whatever you want. I am not your keeper. But I am not responsible for whatever Professor Gold does when you enter like that.”

 “So you  _do_ care about me.”

She has an insane urge to either slap that shit-eating grin off his face or kiss it (and damn it, theatre is doing weird, melodramatic things to her brain). 

Instead, she looks over her clipboard, points to a space just upstage from where she is standing. “We need a fresh spike over here!” she calls to any stagehand who might be within earshot. She addresses a timorous looking first-year student, “You - get the gaffer’s tape and fix it.”

Killian doesn’t seem to get the memo that has been dismissed, continuing to follow her movements with immense fascination, like he’s cataloging all of her habits and mannerisms for a case study. 

“Admit it, Swan,” he leans in and she refuses to step back. “You’d care if Gold laid waste to me.”

“Laid waste?” she shoots him a look that she hopes is unamused (but feels more coy in execution). “We’re already in Tech Week. Do you  _know_  how hard it would be to replace you at this point?”

His smirk falters to something genuine for a moment.  _Affection_ , she thinks errantly (stupidly).

Then he opens his mouth to speak, and instead calls loudly, “You hear that, ladies and gentleman? Swan says I’m irreplaceable!”

And he was doing  _so_  well. 

\---

The evening of the second to last performance, the cast and crew decide that enough is enough. It’s been a long day - an even longer notes session with Gold (“stay level!” and “remember the bloody blocking!”) - and a celebration is in order.

The confined and welcoming atmosphere of The Dove is crowded with theater geeks, students, and professors, and Emma is three drinks in before she is even able to  _find_ Killian amongst the humanity. 

“How now, Swan!” His voice is brimming with warmth (that seems to be spilling across his ruddy cheeks).

“Hey yourself,” her tongue is tripping, and she fell over that summit from tipsy to drunk somewhere at the beginning of the Manhattan currently sweating condensation over her hand. 

“Enjoying yourself, I hope,” his accent thick with drink.

Looking around, she takes in her friends - leaning against the bar, huddled in corners, putting their napkins in the tea candles scattered about ( _really_ , David?) - and she realizes that, “I am, actually.”

“Good.” And she knows he means it.

“Now,” he signals his thanks to the bartender, who has dropped off a tumbler at his hand. “Let’s make a wager shall we?”

She arches an eyebrow at him, tries not to notice the way his leather jacket strains at his shoulders. “I’m intrigued.”

He leans in conspiratorially, and she tries not to react viscerally to the violent knot suddenly tight in her belly. “How long do think,” he murmurs, “It will take for David to set himself on fire?” 

The laugh that erupts shoots surprise through them both, but she feels a sort of glow around them in this place, and she lets it rumble through her chest and across the room. “I was  _just_  wondering that,” and she’s not one to play along, but she finds herself scrunching her nose in exaggerated thought. “I give it...ten minutes.”

His teeth are neat and white when his grin stretches even father. “You are a kind friend to think he will-”

But he doesn’t finish his sentence because her own smile plummets along with her stomach as Neal walks into the bar - a petite girl (Tamara from chem lab, her brain helpfully supplies) on his arm. 

“I-” she blinks, trying to regain her focus, but she’s lost whatever good was guiding her. Instead, she gulps down the remainder of her drink.

Killian turns, and it should alarm her, how quickly (and obviously) he pieces together the disaster of everything  _Neal._  “Come on, then,” he grabs her coat from the back of the bar chair, and jerks his head to the door. “I have just the thing.”

There’s a numbness to her movements and an automatic quality to the way she tows behind him, that she doesn’t notice until they are down the street that he is gripping her loose hand tightly in his.

He makes a hard right into an alleyway, and she thinks that now might be the time to say something.

“Are you planning to murder me?”

“Swan,” there’s a placating tone in the way he says her name, but it’s a facade and she can see hints of tenderness through the cracks. “If I wanted to murder you, there are plenty of heavy props and counterweights I could drop on you that I have access to  _everyday_. Why wait until now?” 

“Wow. Thanks, Scooby Doo. I’m comforted,” and the whiskey is pushing through her veins again.

Killian shakes his head, but produces a key from nowhere, opening a door at the side of the building. “Just trust me.”

She hesitates, but steps through the heavy fire door.

It’s not until her eyes adjust to the dimly lit interior that she realizes where Killian has broken them into (whether having a key precludes B and E, she’s not sure).

“Is this - is this the opera house?”

His answer in the affirmative is more of a formality because the Tiffany sconces, gold filigree, and crimson tapestries are  _kind_   _of_  a giveaway.

“How?” Is all she can ask.

Killian’s already leading her up set of marble stairs, “I work as a projectionist here for their film series.”

Whatever biting remark she had lined up slips from her, as she pauses mid-climb to assess him. When he senses she’s not at his side, he turns around.

His face is open with that infuriatingly honest look he gets when she’s fired a particularly barbed remark in his direction.

“You lied about why you joined the play.”

The way he slightly lowers his chin spells a bashfulness that isn’t present in his swagger and rolled cigarettes. He nods. “I lied about why I joined the play.” 

And it’s a moment that is as crystalline and beautiful as the chandeliers above them and  _what the hell, Emma?_

“Come on,” he skips two steps. “You’ve not seen the best part.”

\---

The best part, it turns out, is the auditorium. Empty and eerie and dark and  _amazing._

He giggles ( _giggles_ ) as he rushes down the aisle toward the proscenium stage. Stopping just short of the apron, she watches in amusement as he collapses to the ground, sprawled on the scarlet carpet. “Swan!” his shout wraps around the balcony and flings across the ceiling. “The stage is yours! Encore, encore!”

“I haven’t even performed anything, idiot.”

It’s serene, this unusual piece of the theater’s life - still and shrouded in shadow. She can picture the spectacles that have graced the stage, itches to touch the props and costumes that must be stashed in some room just beyond the wings. 

She traps it all in, all of the awe streaming from the lone bulb of the ghostlight at stage left; stores it to return to when the world is too much. (The fact that  _he_  gave this to her is terrifying.)

And then she’s on the stage (wood giving graciously beneath her), and there are rows and rows of vacant seats, and this is magic, she’s sure of it.

“My state is desperate for my master's love,” her voice is booming and touching every corner, every inch of the darkness. “As I am woman - now alas the day! What thriftless sighs shall poor Olivia breathe? O Time, thou must untangle this, not I; it is too hard a knot for me t'untie.”

There’s silence. Complete and utter, swallowing silence.

“Emma,” wide-eyed and stricken, Killian stands, beholds her as he would some wonder. “That was  _beautiful_.”

She laughs and twirls (not wanting to meet his eyes again), her stockings slippery at the ball of her right foot. “You are so full of shit.”

He scrambles to his feet, up the stairs. “No, I’m serious, lass!” He gestures wildly with his hands. “Why didn’t you audition?”

Her foot hits a particularly well-tread patch and she slips (gracelessly) onto her ass. It’s definitely the bourbon bubbling through her veins at this point, but she is  _happy_  and she laughs heartily. “Trust me,” she traces the constellations painted on the ceiling, “I am much more of a behind-the-scenes person.” 

“Well, you’re selling yourself short, Swan.” A hollow thud and he has flopped on his stomach next to her. “I think you’d be brilliant.”

The turn of her lips (alcohol, it’s absolutely the alcohol) is completely beyond her control, as is the drop of her head to the right, to look at the reddened tips of his ears. “Yeah?”

His eyes glance along the curves of her face and she can almost see her own silhouette outlined in the movement. It’s jarringly intimate in a way no touch has ever been, and her heart is thrumming painfully (a hum against her breastbone that she wants to press her palm against, just to see if it shakes her hand). 

Pink lips part, “Yeah.” 

And then he leans up and over her, his hair messy and haloed white in the ghost light, and he kisses her. 

There are sighs and that softfirm press of mouth against mouth, and it’s delicately  _breathy_. When his lower lip is nestled between her own, his head tilted just slightly and nose pressed to her cheek, and she is sure her whole body will fail her in the whitehot freefall of caresses and nips, he pulls back.

They’re nearly still in the silent theater. Echoes of exhales bounce back at them as his thumb traces the slope of her nose, then his callused hand is cupping her jaw and it’s all sudden movement and fierce tugging (at his hair, at her bottom lip, at the neck of his shirt). 

She’s never had something quite this desperate before (never had teeth clacking and push, pull, take, take,  _take_ ). He’s pressed against her and it’s  _stupid_ how much she wants him and his  _stupid_ face, but she ignores whatever part of her is still coherent to make room for a throaty moan as he runs his hand down, down to her backside.

The skirt she’d chosen to wear to the bar is at her waist, and  _god_ who made stockings anyway because she’s  _burning_  as his fingers sink into her thigh. His own mewls of encouragement are getting lost in her mouth and ringing through her bones and -

“Hey!” there’s a shout from the back of the auditorium, “What are you kids doing here?”

They separate so quickly she is taut with unconsumed kisses and her heart hasn’t lost any momentum. Her knees can barely support her weight as she  _sprints_ for the emergency exit.

When she hits the night air, it is startling and cold against her searing skin, and her lungs ache for oxygen, but she suddenly feels  _foolish_ and panicked - and her feet won’t stop their rapid trajectory.

“Swan!” she hears his bellow behind her, but she can’t meet his eyes and she certainly can’t talk to him, and she  _hates_ him. “Swan,  _stop_!” 

The sidewalk rushes under her and her muscles protest, but she makes it back to campus, to her room without him following.

It’s just as well; graduation is a few, short weeks away and Emma Swan isn’t a wonder and she isn’t precious and she certainly won’t be anyone’s anchor.

\----

She doesn’t speak to him as the cast and crew gather round, the audience chattering just beyond. And she avoids him throughout the first three acts - sending members of her crew to the men’s dressing room to get him for his scenes, asking others to ensure that he makes his cue and has his props.

But by the fourth act, he’s cottoned on to her avoidance. 

“Swan,” he finally finds her, huddled in a corner over her binder of production notes. 

“Now is  _not_  the time, Killian.” She aches in her joints, behind her eyes, but she can’t.  _She can’t._

“Come on, Swan,” and his hand covers the list of cues (she knows by heart anyway).

And she thinks about Neal and the time she spent with him. The moments when she laughed and felt treasured; short bursts of life where she was the center of someone’s universe - until she wasn’t. 

Never again.

“There’s no point, Killian.”

His brows are drawn, and he’s desperately trying to bring his eyes to hers, but she remembers that face (honest, sweet, too kind). “What do you mean ‘ _there’s no point_?’”

Emma’s not naive. She knows what senior year is - hook-ups and last chances and we can forget about this once diploma is in hand. But the wounds she has (deep and still red with anger) aren’t like her classmates. “I can’t -" she shakes her head, meets his open gaze. "I don’t do casual.”

“That’s not quite what I had in mind either,” his words are measured, careful syllables from a mouth she knows (oh  _god_ ) is capable of uncareful things. “Did I give you that idea?”

“No, I,” she swallows, and her throat is frustratingly tight. “We’re graduating in a few weeks, Killian. It’s not worth it.”

A cheer from the audience is the only sound punctuating their conversation.

“Not worth it?” His face - ridiculous ( _gorgeous)_  with eyeliner for the stage - is stunned. “Who gave you the idea you weren’t worth it, Swan?”

“Just, nevermind. It’s fine,” she pretends to cross out a line on the sheet. "You're up in a minute."

Then his hands are at her face, cradling her jaw, brushing his thumbs at the apples of her cheeks, and it’s all she can do not to cry (and she can  _see_ : to him she is  _fragile_  and  _precious_  and infinitely breakable).

“No. No, it’s not fine,” a gentle stroke of his forefingers at the soft, sensitive place just behind her ear has her sighing despite herself. “Emma.  _Please_  listen to me. You are  _brilliant_. And I don’t know who you decided you  _weren’t_ , but trust me. They will get what they deserve.”

And when he kisses her this time, it is the simplest and most complex act she has ever encountered. It is a sonnet, it is a soliloquy, and she is a  _wonder_. (His wonder.)

\----

The cast party is in full swing when they arrive.

(Her Bug, it turns out, while not efficient on gas mileage, is a  _very_ efficient place for heavy petting.)

“Can’t we just go back to my room, love?” he’s already demanding (his term - she thinks it falls pretty solidly under ‘whining’) quite a bit, and they’re only hours into their relationship. “All of these people will be here tomorrow.” 

She shakes her head, absently itches her chest, where her heart hasn’t stopped racing from his mid-show confession (from the way his hand trailed along the hem of her pants, under the lace of her bra minutes before).

“And I,” she casts him a familiar withering stare, “Will _also_ be here tomorrow.”

“But _will you?”_

When she rolls her eyes at him, it is all so familiar and wonderful (and the way his hand glances over her backside is wonderfully, startlingly new). 

“Of course I will, you idiot.”

David opens the door with a hollered greeting, and Killian reaches for her hand. “Here is my hand,” he grins. “You shall from this time be your master's mistress.” 

And she can’t even summon the effort chastise him - grasping his hand tightly and following him inside. 

 


End file.
